by Hermann Hesse

7) Eva

Once during my vacation I visited the house where years before Demian had lived with his mother. I saw an old woman strolling in the garden and, speaking with her, learned that it was her house. I inquired after the Demian family. She remembered them very well but could not tell me where they lived at present. Sensing my interest she took me into the house, brought out a leather album and showed me a photo of Demian's mother. I could hardly remember what she looked like, but now as I saw the small likeness my heart stood still: it was my dream image! That was she, the tall, almost masculine woman who resembled her son, with maternal traits, severity, passion; beautiful and alluring, beautiful and unapproachable,daemon and mother, fate and beloved. There was no mistaking her!

To discover in this fashion that my dream image existed struck me as a miracle. So there was a woman who looked like that, who bore the features of my destiny! And to be Demian's mother. Where was she?

Shortly afterwards I embarked on my trip. What a strange journey it was! I traveled restlessly from place to place, following every impulse, always searching for this woman.

There were days when everyone I met reminded me of her, echoed her, seemed to resemble her, drew me through the streets of unfamiliar cities, through railroad stations and into trams, as in an intricate dream. There were other days when I realized the futility of my search. Then I would idly sit somewhere in a park or in some hotel garden, in a waiting room, trying to make the picture come alive within me. But it had become shy and elusive. I found it impossible to fall asleep. Only while traveling on the train could I catch an occasional brief nap. Once, in Zurich, a woman approached me, an impudent pretty creature. I took hardly any notice of her and walked past as though she didn't exist. I would rather have died on the spot than have paid attention to another woman, even for an hour.

I felt my fate drawing me on, I felt the moment of my fulfillment coming near and I was sick with impatience at not being able to do anything. Once in a railroad station, in Innsbruck I think, I caught sight of a woman who reminded me of her -- in a train just pulling away. I was miserable for days. And suddenly the form reappeared in a dream one night. I awoke humiliated and dejected by the futility of my hunt and I took the next train home.

A few weeks later I enrolled at the university of H. I found everything disappointing. The lectures on the history of philosophy were just as uninspired and stereotyped as the activities of most of the students. Everything seemed to run according to an old pattern, everyone was doing the same thing, and the exaggerated gaiety on the boyish faces looked depressingly empty and ready-made. But at least I was free, I had the whole day to myself, lived quietly and peacefully in an old house near the town wall, and on my table lay a few volumes of Nietzsche. I lived with him, sensed the loneliness of his soul, perceived the fate that had propelled him on inexorably; I suffered with him, and rejoiced that there had been one man who had followed his destiny so relentlessly.

Late one evening I was sauntering through town. An autumn wind was blowing and I could hear the fraternities frolic in the taverns. Clouds of tobacco smoke drifted out open windows with a profusion of song, loud, rhythmic yet uninspired, lifelessly uniform.

I stood at a street corner and listened: out of two bars the methodically rehearsed gaiety of youth rang out against the night. False communion everywhere, everywhere shedding the responsibility of fate, flight to the herd for warmth.

Two men slowly walked past behind me. I caught a few words of their conversation.

"Isn't it just like the young men's house in a kraal?" said one of them. "Everything fits down to the tattooing which is in vogue again. Look, that's young Europe."

The voice sounded strangely and admonishingly familiar. I followed the two of them down the dark lane. One of them was a Japanese, small and elegant. Under a street lamp I saw his yellow face light up in a smile.

The other was now speaking again.

"I imagine it's just as bad where you come from, in Japan. People that don't follow the herd are rare everywhere. There are some here too."

I felt a mixture of alarm and joy at each word. I knew the speaker. It was Demian. I followed him and the Japanese through the wind-swept streets; listening to their conversation I relished the sound of Demian's voice. It still had its familiar ring; the same old beautiful certainty and calm had all their old power over me. Now all was well. I had found him.

At the end of a street in the suburbs the Japanese took his leave and unlocked his house door. Demian retraced his steps, I had stopped and was waiting for him in the middle of the street. I became very agitated as I saw him approach, upright, with elastic step, in a brown rubber raincoat. He came closer without changing his pace until he stopped a few steps in front of me. Then he removed his hat and revealed his old light-skinned face with the decisive mouth and the peculiar brightness on his broad forehead.

"Demian," I called out.

He stretched out his hand.

"So, it's you, Sinclair! I was expecting you."

"Did you know I was here?"

"I didn't exactly know it but I definitely wished you were. I didn't catch sight of you

until this evening. You've been following us for quite some time."

"Did you recognize me at once?"

"Of course. You've changed somewhat. But you have the sign."

"The sign. What kind of sign?"

"We used to call it the mark of Cain earlier on -- if you can still remember. It's our

sign. You've always had it, that's why I became your friend. But now it has become more distinct."

"I wasn't aware of that. Or actually, yes, once I painted a picture of you, Demian, and was astonished that it also resembled myself. Was that the sign?"

"That was it. It's good that you're here. My mother will be pleased, too."

Suddenly I was frightened.

"Your mother? Is she here, too? But she doesn't know me."

"But she knows about you. She will recognize you even without my saying who you are. We've been in the dark about you for a long time."

"I often wanted to write you, but it was no use. I've known for some time that I would find you soon. I waited for it each day."

He thrust his arm under mine and walked along with me. An aura of calm surrounded him which affected me, too. Soon we were talking as we used to talk in the past. Our thoughts went back to our time in school, the Confirmation classes and also to that last unhappy meeting during my vacation. Only our earliest and closest bond, the Franz Kromer episode, was never mentioned.

Suddenly we found ourselves in the midst of a strange conversation touching on many ominous topics. Picking up where Demian left off in his conversation with the Japanese, we had discussed the life most of the students led, then came to something else, something that seemed to lie far afield. Yet in Demian's words an intimate connection became evident.

He spoke about the spirit of Europe and the signs of the times. Everywhere, he said, we could observe the reign of the herd instinct, nowhere freedom and love. All this false communion -- from the fraternities to the choral societies and the nations themselves -- was an inevitable development, was a community born of fear and dread, out of embarrassment, but inwardly rotten, outworn, close to collapsing.

"Genuine communion," said Demian, "is a beautiful thing. But what we see nourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of one another and for a time it will transform the world. The community spirit at present is only a manifestation of the herd instinct. Men fly into each other's arms because they are afraid of each other -- the owners are for themselves, the workers for themselves, the scholars for themselves! And why are they afraid? You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them! They all sense that the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they live according to archaic laws -- neither their religion nor their morality is in any way suited to the needs of the present. For a hundred years or more Europe has done nothing but study and build factories! They know exactly how many ounces of powder it takes to kill a man but they don't know how to pray to God, they don't even know how to be happy for a single contented hour. Just take a look at a student dive! Or a resort where the rich congregate. It's hopeless. Dear Sinclair, nothing good can come of all of this. These people who huddle together in fear are filled with dread and malice, no one trusts the other. They hanker after ideals that are ideals no longer but they will hound the man to death who sets up a new one. I can feel the approaching conflict. It's coming, believe me, and soon. Of course it will not 'improve' the world. Whether the workers kill the manufacturers or whether Germany makes war on Russia will merely mean a change of ownership. But it won't have been entirely in vain. It will reveal the bankruptcy of present-day ideals, there will be a sweeping away of Stone Age gods. The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish -- and it will."

"And what will happen to us during this conflict?"

"To us? Oh, perhaps we'll perish in it. Our kind can be shot, too. Only we aren't done away with as easily as all that. Around what remains of us, around those of us who survive, the will of the future will gather. The will of humanity, which our Europe has shouted down for a time with its frenzy of technology, will come to the fore again. And then it will become clear that the will of humanity is nowhere -- and never was -- identical with the will of present-day societies, states and peoples, clubs and churches. No, what Nature wants of man stands indelibly written in the individual, in you, in me. It stood written in Jesus, it stood written in Nietzsche. These tendencies -- which are the only important ones and which, of course, can assume different forms every day -- will have room to breathe once the present societies have collapsed."

It was late when we stopped in front of a garden by the river.

'This is where we live," said Demian. "You must come visit us soon. We've been waiting for you."

Elated I walked the long way home through a night which had now turned chill. Here and there students were reeling noisily to their quarters. I had often marked the contrast between their almost ludicrous gaiety and my lonely existence, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with a feeling of deprivation. But never until today had I felt with as much calm and secret strength how little it mattered to me, how remote and dead this world was for me. I remembered civil servants in my home town, worthy old gentlemen who clung to the memories of their drunken university days as to keepsakes from paradise and fashioned a cult of their "vanished" student years as poets or other romantics fashion their childhood. It was the same everywhere! Everywhere they looked for "freedom" and "luck" in the past, out of sheer dread of their present responsibilities and future course. They drank and caroused for a few years and then they slunk away to become serious-minded gentlemen in the service of the state. Yes, our society was rotten, and these student stupidities were not so stupid, not so bad as a hundred other things.

By the time I reached my distant house and was preparing for bed, all these thoughts had vanished and my entire being clung expectantly to the great promise that this day had brought me. As soon as I wished, even tomorrow, I was to see Demian's mother. Let the students have their drunken orgies and tattoo their faces; the rotten world could await its destruction -- for all I cared. I was waiting for one thing -- to see my fate step forth in a new guise.

I slept deeply until late in the morning. The new day dawned for me like a solemn feast, the kind I had not experienced since childhood. I was full of a great restlessness, yet without fear of any kind. I felt that an important day had begun for me and I saw and experienced the changed world around me, expectant, meaningful, and solemn; even the gentle autumn rain had its beauty and a calm and festive air full of happy, sacred music. For the first time the outer world was perfectly attuned to the world within; it was a joy to be alive. No house, no shop window, no face disturbed me, everything was as it should be, without any of the flat, humdrum look of the everyday; everything was a part of Nature, expectant and ready to face its destiny with reverence. That was how the world had appeared to me in the mornings when I was a small boy, on the great feast days, at Christmas or Easter. I had forgotten that the world could still be so lovely. I had grown accustomed to living within myself. I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was still possible -- even if you had become liberated and had renounced your childhood happiness -- to see the world shine and to savor the delicious thrill of the child's vision.

The moment came when I found my way back to the garden at the edge of town where I had taken leave of Demian the night before. Hidden behind tall, wet trees stood a little house, bright and livable. Tall plants flowered behind plate glass; behind glistening windows dark walls shone with pictures and rows of books. The front door led straight into a small, warm hallway. A silent old maid, dressed in black with a white apron, showed me in and took my coat.

She left me alone in the hallway. I looked around and at once was swept into the middle of my dream. High up on the dark wood-paneled wall, above a door, hung a familiar painting, my bird with the golden-yellow sparrow hawk's head, clambering out of the terrestrial shell. Deeply moved, I stood there motionless -- I felt joy and pain as though at this moment everything I had ever done and experienced returned to me in the form of a reply and fulfillment. In a flash I saw hosts of images throng past my mind's eye: my parents' house with the old coat of arms above the doorway, the boy Demian sketching the emblem, myself as a boy under the fearful spell of my enemy Kromer, myself as an adolescent in my room at school painting my dream bird at a quiet table, the soul caught in the intricacies of its own threads -- and everything, everything to this present moment resounded once more within me, was affirmed by me, answered, sanctioned.

With tears in my eyes I stared at my picture and read within myself. Then I lowered my eyes: beneath the painting of the bird in the open door stood a tall woman in a dark dress. It was she.

I was unable to utter a word. With a face that resembled her son's, timeless, ageless, and full of inner strength, the beautiful woman smiled with dignity. Her gaze was fulfillment, her greeting a homecoming. Silently I stretched my hands out to her. She took both of them in her firm, warm hands.

"You are Sinclair. I recognized you at once. Welcome!"

Her voice was deep and warm. I drank it up like sweet wine. And now I looked up and into her quiet face, the black unfathomable eyes, at her fresh, ripe lips, the clear, regal brow that bore the sign.

"How glad I am," I said and kissed her hands. "I believe I have been on my way my whole life -- and now I have come home."

She smiled like a mother.

"One never reaches home," she said. "But where paths that have affinity for each other intersect the whole world looks like home, for a time."

She was expressing what I had felt on my way to her. Her voice and her words resembled her son's and yet were quite different. Everything was riper, warmer, more self-evident. But just as Max had never given anyone the impression of being a boy, so his mother did not appear at all like a woman who had a full-grown son, so young and sweet were her face and hair, so taut and smooth her golden skin, so fresh her mouth. More regal even than in my dreams she stood before me.

This, then, was the new guise in which my fate revealed itself to me, no longer stern, no longer setting me apart, but fresh and joyful! I made no resolutions, took no vows -- I had attained a goal, a high point on the road: from there the next stage of the journey appeared unhampered and marvelous, leading toward promised lands. Whatever might happen to me now, I was filled with ecstasy: that this woman existed in the world, that I could drink in her voice and breathe her presence. No matter whether she would become my mother, my beloved or a goddess -- if she could just be here! if only my path would be close to hers!

She pointed up to my painting.

"You never made Max happier than with this picture," she said thoughtfully. "And me, too. We were waiting for you and when the painting came we knew that you were on your way. When you were a little boy, Sinclair, my son one day came home from school and said to me: there is a boy in school, he has the sign on his brow, he has to become my friend. That was you. You have not had an easy time but we had confidence in you. You met Max again during one of your vacations. You must have been about sixteen at the time. Max told me about it --"

I interrupted: "He told you about that? That was the most miserable period of my life!"

"Yes, Max said to me: Sinclair has the most difficult part coming now. He's making one more attempt to take refuge among the others. He's even begun going to bars. But he won't succeed. His sign is obscured but it sears him secretly. Wasn't it like that?"

"Yes, exactly. Then I found Beatrice and I finally found a master again. His name was Pistorius. Only then did it become clear to me why my boyhood had been so closely bound up with Max and why I could not free myself from him. Dear mother, at that time I often thought that I should have to take my life. Is the way as difficult as this for everybody?"

She stroked my hair. The touch felt as light as a breeze.

"It is always difficult to be born. You know the chick does not find it easy to break his way out of the shell. Think back and ask yourself: Was the way all that difficult? Was it only difficult? Wasn't it beautiful, too? Can you think of a more beautiful and easier way?"

I shook my head.

"It was difficult," I said as though I were asleep, "it was hard until the dream came."

She nodded and pierced me with a glance.

"Yes, you must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one."

I was startled and frightened. Was that a warning, a defensive gesture, so soon? But it didn't matter: I was prepared to let her guide me and not to inquire into goals.

"I do not know," I said, "how long my dream is supposed to last. I wish it could be forever. My fate has received me under the picture of the bird like a lover and like a beloved. I belong to my fate and to no one else."

"As long as the dream is your fate you should remain faithful to it," she confirmed in a serious tone of voice.

I was overcome by sadness and a longing to die in this enchanted hour. I felt tears -what an infinity since I had last wept -- well up irresistibly in my eyes and overwhelm me. I turned abruptly away from her, stepped to the window, and stared blindly into the distance.

I heard her voice behind me, calm and yet brimful with tenderness as a beaker with wine.

"Sinclair, you are a child! Your fate loves you. One day it will be entirely yours -just as you dream it -- if you remain constant to it."

I had gained control of myself and turned toward her again. She gave me her hand.

"I have a few friends," she said with a smile, "a few very close friends who call me Frau Eva. You shall be one of them if you wish."

She led me to the door, opened it, and pointed into the garden. "You'll find Max out there."